As my vision gradually began to focus I realised I had not the slightest idea where I was. A little bit of panic began to set in so I jumped up and walked over to the window. It was just getting light outside, there was snow everywhere and other than that all I could see was a load of wooden houses. I looked ay my phone - 5am. What was the last thing I could remember from the previous day? Having vodka breakfast with Zhenja and Misha on the train? I strained to remember something else....after several minutes one more memory came back to me, that of finding Zhenja's friend in another carriage on the train and him giving us another bottle of vodka. So where the hell was I now? Somewhere in Severobaikalsk, the final ... read more

The people who got on the bus at Cheremshanka airport had hard, weathered, humourless faces. The small planes and helicopters there irregularly serve a range of settlements in the Extreme North, many of them closed Arctic towns and cities inaccessible by road and off limits to anyone who doesn't live there, places where the extreme weather and pollution from industry keep life expectancy as low as the forties. The people who got on the bus at the main Krasnoyarsk airport, its grimey windows, torn seats and faded paint worlds away from the sleek, shiney silver, luxury coach pictured in a poster at the bus stop, appeared to be a different kettle of fish altogether. I was amazed by how familiar and normal they looked; there, 4000km east of Moscow in the middle of Siberia, the middle ... read more

On returning to Moscow from Kiev I tell a friend how beautiful the latter is. "Moscow really can't compare," I say. "What do you mean? What about the Kremlin and Red Square? St. Basil's Cathedral?" he asks. "Well yeah, I guess..." And what about this, that, the other, such and such a monastery, park, cathedral...? It suddenly dawns on me what a ridiculous claim I have just made and that in the 18 months I have spent in Moscow I have never really given the place a chance. I arrived here due to my Russian ex-girlfriend, not because of interest in Moscow or Russia. A very strong interest later developed but while in Moscow I have always been working too hard to take time out to just wander round or take in the sites. If I ... read more

The chills enter my body minutes after I finish teaching a lesson at the BKC school near Chistye Prudi metro station. The temperature outside is 23 degrees Centigrade below zero so I assume someone has left a window open but there is none to be found. I put on my fleece and coat but still the chills get stronger. A horrific, unthinkable thought awakens in the back of my mind but I dismiss it instantly as an impossibility - 'maybe it's malaria recurring.' But it can't be. I was treated at one of the best hospitals in the world and they gave me medicine to ensure that it would never come back, that all the parasites that stay in your liver and cause recurrences were killed. I begin to feel feverish and decide to head home ... read more

The Moscow metro (underground / subway) takes up so much of my life here, represents such a vast cross-section of society and inspires such a mind-boggling mixture of awe, respect, pity, frustration, fury and disgust that it deserves, at the least, a mention. Approaching a metro station you must first walk past an area of crappy food stands selling such delightful specialities as dog, cat and rat shawarma, grease dripping down the mounds of meat and collecting at the bottom in pools while the white flesh being roasted pulsates with fat as it revolves next to the grill. Most of these places have a single tall circular table next to them with a diameter of perhaps three feet where at any time of the day, be it eight in the morning or eleven at night, you ... read more